Enhanced auroral activity, far side CME
Tuesday, 14 April 2015 15:44 UTC
The speed of the solar wind as well as the interplanetary magnetic field strength and solar wind plasma temperature started to increase early this morning which is likely associated with the expected arrival of a solar wind stream associated with a coronal hole on the Sun's southern hemisphere.
However, the solar wind speed is still slow right now with a speed of about 350 km/s meaning geomagnetic storming conditions should not be expected just yet. The strength of the interplanetary magnetic field is right now about 11nT and it's direction (Bz) is southward at -10nT meaning we will likely see enhanced auroral activity in the hours ahead up to a Kp-value of 4. This stands for active geomagnetic conditions with possible auroral displays visible on the horizon from northern Scotland, Norway, large parts of Sweden and Finland.
Far side coronal mass ejection
A large asymmetric full halo coronal mass ejection became visible early this morning in SOHO/LASCO imagery but it has been determined that it came from a far side event. No effects are expected from this event at Earth.
Image: A far side full halo CME can be seen on this image from SOHO.
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